penny candy: a confection

By Jonathan Norton

penny candy: a confection, which had its acclaimed premiere at the Dallas Theater Center in 2019, follows one family as they seek to balance their responsibilities to their community and to one another. Growing up in a candy house sounds like every kid’s dream. But for 12-year-old Jon-Jon, helping his father run Paw Paw’s Candy Tree out of their run-down one-bedroom apartment isn’t quite a dream come true. As their neighborhood of Pleasant Grove, Dallas sees a surge of violence fueled by epidemic drug use and increasing racial tensions, the business begins to fail and danger looms immediately outside the family's front door.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Deep Vellum Publishing
• Release date: Dec 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9781646051069

Book preview

Penny CandyHalfPageTitlePage

Deep Vellum Publishing

3000 Commerce St., Dallas, Texas 75226

deepvellum.org • @deepvellum

Deep Vellum is a 501c3 nonprofit literary arts organization founded in 2013 with the mission to bring the world into conversation through literature.

Copyright © 2021 Jonathan Norton

First edition, 2021

All rights reserved.

Support for this publication has been provided in part by the Addy Foundation, the Moody Fund for the Arts, and Amazon Literary Partnership.

ISBNs: 978-1-64605-105-2 (paperback) | 978-1-64605-106-9 (ebook)

library of congress control number:

2021946199

Front cover design by Justin Childress | justinchildress.co

Interior Layout and Typesetting by KGT

Printed in the United States of America

Space

For Laura Mae and Willie James Norton

CONTENTS

Production History

Characters

Enter Jon Jon

About the Candy House

Act One - Scene One

Act One - Scene Two

Act One - Scene Three

Act Two - Scene One

Act Two - Scene Two

PRODUCTION HISTORY

penny candy was commissioned by the Dallas Theater Center (Kevin Moriarty, artistic director; Jeffrey Woodward, managing director) and had its world premiere there on June 12, 2019. The production was directed by Derrick Sanders. The set design was by Courtney O’Neill, the costume design by Samantha C. Jones, the lighting design by Alan C. Edwards, the sound design and original music were by Elisheba Ittoop, the hair and makeup design were by Cherelle Guyton, the video design was by Sarah Harris, the prop design was by John Slauson, and the fight choreography was by Ashley H. White. The assistant director was Ashley Roberson and the stage managers were Anna Baranski and Samantha Honeycutt.

The cast was:

penny candy was developed with the support of PlayPenn in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

CHARACTERS

JON-JON – African American, twelve years old. Helps his dad with the family business.

DUBBA J – African American, sixty-two. Retired. He now runs the family business—the neighborhood candy house. Dubba J’s real name is Willie James, but folks call him WJ, which often sounds like Dubba J.

KINGSTON – Jamaican, late twenties. Crack dealer. He works out of the apartment next door to the candy house. He’s adopted Dubba J, Laura Mae, and Jon-Jon as his family.

LAURA MAE – African American, late forties to early fifties. Jon-Jon’s mom and Dubba J’s wife. She started the candy house and ran it for many years before her husband retired. Now she works as a nurses’ aide in a nursing home.

ROSE – African American, early twenties. Crack dealer. She works for Kingston. She grew up in the neighborhood and the candy house has always been her second home.

NICOLE – African American, mid to late twenties. A single mom of a four-year-old girl. Like Rose, she grew up in the neighborhood. She leads the Neighborhood Watch.

DONNIE – African American, early to mid-forties. He and his wife are close friends of Dubba J and Laura Mae. He’s looking for his son, who is missing.

SETTING

A candy house in Pleasant Grove, a working-class neighborhood in Dallas. The candy house is a mom and pop store operated out of a one-bedroom apartment.

TIME

Summertime, 1988.

NOTE: A / indicates when dialogue is cut off and jumped on by the next person.

ENTER JON-JON

I guess I should start with the question playwrights always get. How long did it take to write the play? The process for penny candy started in the summer of 2015 when I was commissioned to write a new play for DTC.

The months passed, and by early fall I was still play-less. I had plenty of ideas, but the only idea that really interested me was one I’d had a few years prior but never started. It was penny candy … or a play sorta like penny candy—then called candyland. It was about a childless couple based on my parents who ran a candy house. It was basically The Wire meets Homicide: Life on the Streets—really dark, graphic, and sad. But something didn’t feel right.

Remember that I said in candyland my parents did not have children? Weird, right? Well that was because I could not put myself inside that world. Because that was not the world I remembered. It wasn’t my truth. That wasn’t my childhood. And I began to wonder why I’d want to remember my parents that way. That wasn’t their story either. The tone of the play began to shift in my mind and EUREKA—not only did I have a new play—but I got to join my parents onstage. Enter Jon-Jon!

Another EUREKA moment came when I found a beautiful book by the photographer Jamel Shabazz, titled A Time Before Crack. Jamel’s book celebrates beautiful expressions of love, brotherhood/sisterhood, community / solidarity, black joy … a time before crack. His later books examined the horrific aftermath of crack on African American communities. I decided to explore this further in penny candy. My play follows a family and community at a turning point. The innocence of yesterday hangs in the balance, while a dangerous and uncertain future awaits. The story is hilarious, heartening, and haunting in equal measure.

So back to the question I posed earlier. I started writing penny candy in 2015. I submitted the final rehearsal draft in February 2019. Four years. But in truth, I’ve been writing this play my entire life.

Space

ABOUT THE CANDY HOUSE:

The candy house is operated out of a one-bedroom apartment right smack dab in the middle of a badly aging apartment complex that has seen better days.

There are two doors. A regular front door and a sliding glass door on another wall. The front door is always locked. Only the family uses that door. Customers use the sliding glass door. There are burglar bars on both doors.

The candy house is organized in this way: there is a glass showcase counter containing a big mix of different candies. Behind the counter is a long folding table that contains even more candy. Also on